Though Russia
has gone through significant domestic changes since 1991, the extent of Russia's
achievements rarely have been acknowledged in the Western media. Instead, Russia
has been continuously criticized for not developing fast enough. Western media,
especially that of the USA,
ignores Russia's
positive developments and concentrates on the negative.

Russia
made significant changes from the Soviet totalitarian system, but instead of acknowledging
this progress, the country is characterized by simplistic and misleading
historical analogies associated with the KGB, the Soviet Union,
and repressive government control. [2] The
opinions of Russian citizens on their political system or their president, as
well as the actions by the Russian state that do not fit the description of
'dictatorial power' are typically omitted from Western media coverage. [3] The result of this selection bias builds up over
time to make an overall negative image of the country and its president.

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Creating
an external threat in the eyes of Americans and Europeans is now an instrument
of uniting these countries on foreign policy issues, as expressed by Zbigniew Brzezinski
in his The Grand Chessboard: "As
America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more
difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the
circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external
threat." [4]

The
news on Russia
became consistently negative after 2000. Any news on positive development
inside Russia,
or about Russia's
positive international involvements were ignored, meanwhile, negative news
received immediate attention. Just few examples from that period can illustrate
this claim.